February 11, 2011

I had a strange dream last night:

Stretched across a worn, dusty, massive plain, 2 armies, both of which number in the millions, stand opposite of each other. A soot-colored, gargantuan mountain breathing smoke sits at the heels of the evil army. The sky has absorbed the mood, showing off a thick mass of rolling, low-hanging clouds, dark grey and sickly green in color. On the horizon to the west, a faint glow breaks the doom of the ominous clouds, a pale light lingers, hugging the ground for survival. The smell of sweat, horses, and iron fills the air around me, whereas drifting from the other side comes the smell of rot and mucus.

I unsheathe my sword slowly and can hear my heart pounding in my ears, the sound of my breath magnified by the helmet covering my head. My horse utters a brief “neigh” and I look to the west, taking notice of the pale light reflecting off of the millions of helmets stretching out as far as the eye can see. I hear the men clearing their throats, coughing, and shifting their feet. All jaws are clenched as the thousand yard stare ensues, both sides contributing to the tension that you couldn’t cut with a knife if you so wished it. Everything cuts to black.

A thousand “clangs” mix with a great roar and, as if opening my eyes, I can see again. I am on my horse, sweeping across the battle field & shouting orders, cutting down my enemies all the while. A white flag splattered in blood surges up from the thick of soldiers under attack. I give my steed a light kick and run full speed into the group, plowing my way to the middle, and grab the flag. A scream erupts behind me and a grotesque captain from the opposite side charges me. I wait. Everything moves in real time around me but the enemy captain and I are stuck in slow motion. The ground rumbles beneath his clumsy, large feet. My horse bull snorts and steps forward, eager to take him on, it seems. I hold the flag over my shoulder and my focus narrows. Beads of sweat fill my peripheral vision and slide off to the sides of my helmet. A tingling feeling fills my groin. The adrenaline. Fear mixed with excitement. A feeling of dominance surges through me, insistent that I overpower this thing that is easily twice my size. A mere 20 feet from me, enraged, out of control, swinging his oversized axe behind his waist, nobody stops him. 15 feet. With all of my strength, I launch the pole-end of the blood-splattered flag at him and, within the blink of an eye he stops dead in his tracks. I hear him coughing, gasping for air over the clamor of war. Blood bubbles up his throat and leaks from his mouth and he stares at me blankly. My horse half-turns back and forth, raising its head up and down and the captain collapses to the ground with an earth-quaking thud.

A raucous chant splits through the plain, grabbing my attention. Tens of thousands of unarmed, but well armored soldiers called “bullies” march toward us. Swords are useless, as are spears. I take off to the east side of the battle, calling out for the archers in the middle and rear of the formations to take aim and fire on my command. Word spreads like wildfire through the ranks as the bullies march closer and in unison, the sound of stress from the twine and the wood sound off . Upon screaming out “UNLEASH!!”, the whittling and spitting noise of tens of thousands of arrows tearing through the air seems to dwarf all other noises. A second volley of arrows only slow the bullies down. I quickly realize the futility of another attack and speed further east, booming out for the immediate formation of the cavalry.

Thunder shakes the earth as they line up, coming out from a passageway that leads deep into the eastern mountains. I cannot count them due to the greatness of their numbers and they are clad in deep, richly colored gold robes with lightweight silver armor plating. Their helmets are rounded with small, silver wings covering the ears and short plumes of white and black on the top. The eye pieces are slanted to give an angry and intimidating appearance. These men are not to be challenged. I point forward and “CHARGE!” reverberates from the mountain behind us and speeds ahead. Right as the bullies approach the front lines of my comrades, we hit the first “thick” of them, plowing through them to the end of their numbers on the western side with relentless determination, confusing, separating, and trampling them. It serves as enough of a punch that the swordsmen/spearmen charge in to cut them down as they scramble to realign/reform themselves.

With the bullies broken, I ride to the eastern mountain passage to meet with a few hundred elite soldiers. They arm themselves as they see fit, each specializing in their own art of killing that compliments the others. I adjust my breastplate as I await their readyness and glance back at the carnage. Two thirds of my brothers in arms, are being slowly overwhelmed. None of the special forces before me seem concerned, so confident they are that their actions on the field will turn the tide back in our favor. A bush rustles behind me and as the figure emerges, I immediately recognize him. It is Gandhi. He hobbles to my horse and asks me how I think he would handle this situation. I pause to consider the meaning of his question and then ask him to back up. He smiles and does so. Refusing to bow to or use nonviolent means against the evil we are fighting, I make a speech to the men present (the full contents of which I cannot recall so will not post) and every time I end a sentence with inspiration, the last word appears in the air in front of me in large, bold, white letters, followed by an exclamation point. The men chant each of those words back to me in unison. At the end of my speech, I give each of the men a look of confidence; at the last one, several elementary schoolmates of mine appear, smirking & shaking their heads, thinking I am being overly dramatic in my speech. I ignore them, seeing the successful effect my speech has on the men and understanding that my classmates knew me as a child but not as the leader I was becoming.

The specialists pull out their battle horns and the largest one is handed to me. We line up at the exit of the passageway and take a few seconds to observe the sight in front of us. It is so dramatic. Poetic. Historic. Beautiful & tragic. The forces at the foot of that terrible black mountain have no idea that we are about to unleash absolute hell on them and chase them until every single one of them is lying motionless in their own blood. I look back at the men one more time, then to the west, whose dying light is rapidly becoming brighter. My horse rears on it’s hind legs and I blow into my horn, sending a crack up the side of the black mountain to the north; it is echoed by the hundreds of horns behind me. We roar ahead, chanting together as loud as our voices permit, causing another crack to split the ground a few hundred feet ahead of us, out of which, a spring of water bubbles up. The blinding light fully breaks in the west, causing a great flash. I wake up.